Our new blog series, Google Goodness, will share the newest and most instructionally-relevant updates in our @jeffcoschools.us domain! Our goal is to regularly and proactively share ways that Google can shape teaching and learning in your classroom! 

It all started with Facebook.  The Global Read Aloud Facebook group is where teachers find a classroom, other than one in their school, to connect and collaborate with each other. The premise is simple; groups pick a book to read aloud to students during a 6-week set period.  During that period, classes try to make as many global connections as possible.  The Facebook group helps to bring understanding about what The Global Read Aloud entails.  Students don't actually access Facebook. They engage in collaborations using a variety of digital tools. The website (linked in the title) matches up classrooms where students from different schools engage in digital activities together.  

The Facebook group does host educator book studies. There is one starting in January called, "The Passionate Readers Winter Book Study" The book study discusses teacher reading identity, student reading identity, classroom libraries, and of course, share must-read, must-add titles for you to consider adding to your classroom.  The book club is free, all you need is your own copy of Passionate Readers and to join the Facebook group where the questions and discussion will happen.

Teachers across the groups will plan purposeful instructions with tech infusion. One goal is to match a digital tool with the task, in order for students to collaborate.  The K-1 class at Peiffer is partnered with another school in Virginia, a kindergarten class. Algonkian Elementary, which is named after a Native American tribe that is widespread and in Virginia. We have done a Mystery Google Hangout to launch our connection (both classes got to ask questions to guess where the class was located), a Flipgrid coming up soon, a Padlet this week, and Seesaw Blog. We have shared the various activities we have done in Seesaw through our blog. We have answered prompts like "What fills your heart with happiness?" "How do you hold someone up?"-

The teachers at Peiffer are using Seesaw Blog to communicate among students from the two schools. The picture above was taken from the blog. You can learn more about this free tool by watching this video. 

I was lucky enough to witness a FLIPGRID that the K-1 class at Peiffer used to draw pictures from a main idea in the the book and the explain their thinking. Flipgrid is a website that allows teachers to create "grids" of short discussion-style questions that students respond to through recorded videos. Each grid is effectively a message board where teachers can pose a question and their students can post 90-second video responses that appear in a tiled "grid" display. Click here to try FLIPGRID out!

Peiffer teachers have been Transforming the Task using the SAMR Model, as well. They are creating, transforming, and evaluating student tasks that register M/R on the SAMR Model. For more information on the SAMR model and how strong learning happens when tasks register on the M/R, check out this Multi-media Text Set.  

The innovative idea began last spring, as the teachers recognized a need to replace the old and uncomfortable library furniture. The library is a shared learning space for everyone at Maple Grove, and Principal Chris Neville began to ponder how students could be involved in the improvements. He was inspired by Jeffco’s vision to transform the task for student learning. ​

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Students have been learning about design thinking (with resources from the Stanford d.school and ISTE Standard "Innovative Designer").    

Research began in the field as students  explored three sites in the community with flexible learning spaces.  Their inquisitive minds visited "The LINK" at the Jeffco Education Center, fellow Jeffco school, Three Creeks K-8, and mindSpark Learning. 
Ben and Jack were amazed by one site on their visit. "It was hard to believe that mindSpark was an old library and had no windows!" In their own design, the boys are interested in understanding how the wall colors might help learners in the library.

Empathizing with multiple stakeholders is important to the fifth graders, so the students have been collecting input from students, staff, and the community.
Surveys created in Google Forms allow students to collect and analyze data and share the results across groups. "We're working on a survey to the teachers right now. The teachers still use [the library], so they still have a voice in it," commented Austin and Ben H.​

The student's creative juices are flowing as they ideate multiple scenarios for their new space. Tristan shares a draft design with considerations for height of the learners. iPads in the library will have the AutoCAD app available for groups as well. 

The budget is on the mind of Bren and Stephanie. "Our budget is really really tight. We may have to reuse some of our stuff. We could reuse the bookshelf and make it a reading space to look outside." A generous donation from the PTA is funding the redesign and community partnerships are at the heart of the project.  Parents with backgrounds in architecture, design, and furniture sales have become local experts from which to learn.  
Instructional Coach, Amy Ellerman, a collaborator in the PBL remarked, "This project has provided such an authentic opportunity for collaboration between students, Maple Grove staff members, and our community. It is expanding our understanding of where and how learning happens."

We will have to wait until the end of the trimester when students share their proposals with school leadership and the PTA to find out the final design. 
Ms. Stahura plans to reveal the renovation and invite all the partners who have supported the project.  The celebration will not only be of the new space, but of the contribution of the fifth grade students to this authentic need in their school.  

On the outside these probably look just like forms of substitution and adaptation from the SAMR model, but in all honesty these are the examples of STEM we had been looking for all along. By merely sharing the potential resources with our peers, on their own they were able to identify a problem or challenge they had been facing in their classes, in many cases how to make something like literature or reading hands on, tangible, and engaging. From there, they were able to brainstorm ideas on how they could use the resources they now had access to to help solve that problem, as a result, they began to make a plan on how they could incorporate that experience into their lessons. Eventually they will get the chance to reflect on the experience and modify it where necessary.

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In time, they will feel comfortable enough with the design cycle to begin letting the students identify their own problems or challenges and developing their own solutions. Because this is really what STEM is. It is not a set curriculum. It is not technology or special set of manipulatives. What STEM is, is teachers digging through recycling boxes looking for resources which students could upcycle into something else. It is providing students and teachers access to resources, skills, and a safe environment where they are free to identify potential problems based on their experiences, where they feel safe and empowered to brainstorm ideas and create solutions to those problems, to design them with guidance when they need it, to fail when things do not go just right (or celebrate the successes when things do go right), and are given the freedom and opportunity to reflect on the experience and what they learned, so that they feel empowered to go out and try again. ​